Ever increasing numbers of wireless devices are being introduced and sold. As such, the radio frequency (RF) spectrum available for these wireless devices to communicate continues to get more and more crowded. More efficient use of the RF spectrum and sharing under-utilized RF spectrum are very important to meet the growing number of wireless devices. One portion of the RF spectrum that is under-utilized is the portion reserved for broadcasting, such as television (TV) broadcasting. Governmental regulators divided the TV portion or range (and/or other portions) into a plurality of channels. However, for any given geographic region many of the channels are not utilized for TV or radio broadcasting.
Unused channels or frequencies of the reserved TV portion of the RF spectrum can be referred to as TV white space. It is possible to utilize these TV white spaces for other uses, however, their use tends to be tightly regulated by governmental institutions (such as the Federal Communications Commission in the United States).
These governmental institutions are establishing databases that map channel or frequency utilization to geographic location. Stated another way, for a given location, the database can indicate a sub-set of frequencies that are utilized (e.g., allocated) for TV broadcasting and other licensed use (such as wireless microphones in some countries) and/or a different sub-set of frequencies that are TV white spaces.
Wireless devices that would like to communicate data over a radio white space frequency, such as a TV white space frequency, have to do so in compliance with the rules established by the governmental institutions. For instance, the devices cannot transmit on allocated frequencies, since the transmission could interfere with the licensed use.